Think there’s nothing you can do to fight Hunger in 1 Minute? Watch this.
Starring: Jack Halaby
Written by: Julie Tortorici & Jessica Arinella
Shot, Edited and Directed by: Alicia Arinella
Produced by: On the Leesh Productions
Consulting Producer: Mary Micari
Music by: Banana Whale
What You Can Do Logo Created by: SCG Siddharth Creative Group
Additional Footage Provided by: Shutterstock, Inc. Used by Permission
Statistical information provided by: City Harvest, www.cityharvest.org
Special Thanks:
Heather Wallace and everyone at City Harvest, www.cityharvest.org
Maureen Halaby, Dennis Arinella and everyone at WLIW
For more information, please visit – www.whatyoucando365.com
When making a list of the world’s most overwhelming problems hunger is pretty close to the top. And when I created the idea of What You Can Do, I honestly wasn’t sure there was anything you could do to fight hunger in one minute.
But as this project has been about separating the possible from the impossible, I was set to find out. In the course of my research I came across the world’s first food rescue organization: City Harvest. And its origins are inspiring.
In the early 1980’s a group of average people were troubled by the fact that many New Yorkers didn’t have enough to eat. When they saw restaurants throwing away perfectly good food they began recruiting friends and borrowing cars to transport this food to where it was needed most. And from those small first steps City Harvest has gone on to deliver 200 million pounds of food to a network of over 600 community food programs throughout New York City in the past 25 years.
So yes, it’s possible.
We have been lucky enough to work with City Harvest for our week on Hunger. I reached out to Heather Wallace to ask her some pressing questions about hunger in New York City and the fight to end it. Please find the interview below.
How has City Harvest helped to fight hunger in NYC?
This year, City Harvest will collect over 25 million pounds of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms. This food is then delivered free of charge to nearly 600 community food programs throughout New York City using a fleet of trucks and bikes as well as volunteers on foot. Each week,
City Harvest helps over 260,000 hungry New Yorkers find their next meal.
City Harvest also addresses hunger’s underlying causes by supporting affordable access to nutritious food in low-income communities, educating individuals, families, and communities in the prevention of diet-related diseases, channeling a greater amount of local farm food into high-need areas, and enhancing the ability of our agency partners to feed hungry men, women, and children.
Has the need or the profile of person who requires City Harvest’s services changed over the years?
Yes! The agencies we serve have reported increases in the people they serve, especially since the economy collapsed in September 2008. Counter to what most people might think about hunger, most people who access emergency food in NYC have jobs and homes. Many simply make too much to qualify for public benefits like food stamps but too little to pay all their living expenses and feed themselves and their families. For example, if a family of three makes more than $24,000 they no longer qualify for food stamps. As anyone who lives in NYC knows, it’s nearly impossible for a single person to live on $24,000/year. When you have a family you are most likely being forced to look for assistance to put food on the table.
Do you think that the current economy has added to this?
Yes! Our agency network has reported seeing an increase of 15% or more in the number of people accessing emergency food during the past year. Many of these are people who never needed help before but who have been pushed to food lines due to extended unemployment and reliance on seasonal or low-paying jobs. The largest increases have been in the number of children and seniors seeking help.
How has working at City Harvest changed your perspective in your own life?
I’m much more aware of how much people in NYC struggle to make it. Most of the people we serve have jobs and homes and just can’t make ends meet. These are hardworking, regular people and you can’t tell just by looking at someone if they’ve just come from lunch at a soup kitchen or if the groceries they are carrying came from a food pantry. For many of them the food we deliver is their only option.
What are the goals and hopes for City Harvest in the future?
Of course we hope for a city where there is no hunger. Where anyone in need is able to find food and where there are services in place that not only provide emergency food to those that need it today, but also provide the support they need to eventually become self-sufficient so they no longer need to stand on line for food.
Is there anything you would like the average person to know about either City Harvest or the fight against hunger?
I want people to know that hunger in NYC isn’t just the homeless person they see on the street; that they would be surprised to see who the people on line for emergency food at city agencies really are. It could be you or I or the receptionist at their office or the guy in the mailroom or the person behind the counter who sells them coffee every morning. It’s easy to get involved and help and it doesn’t take that much to make a real difference. At City Harvest we can provide 4 pounds of food for just a dollar – good food that would be thrown in the garbage will go to feed those in need. We also have lot of volunteer opportunities for those people who have special skills or extra time to give.
One night a few years ago my husband, my sister and I were all watching a brilliant documentary called Why We Fight. The documentary was intelligent, illuminating, shocking, moving and basically made me want to curl up into a big ball and cry. In fact, about an hour into this documentary I felt so overwhelmed that I wanted to turn my attention to something of no substance. And that is how I found myself sequestered in my bedroom reading US magazine.
Somewhere into an article about Brangelina I realized that this is a problem. If you want help starting, stopping or ameliorating a global issue, I am basically your target audience. I genuinely want to help, to get involved, to be of use. But instead, I am hiding under my bed reading made up news about hyphenated celebrities.
I realized then that I had been taken over by an illness I like to refer to as Impending Sense of Doom. Perhaps you recognize this feeling? I also felt ISD while reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and watching the polar bears in An Inconvenient Truth (On the iceberg?! The horror!). ISD comes on when you are presented with an insurmountable issue and you feel like there is nothing you, the average person, can do about it. And when that happens, I just don’t want to know anymore. If I heard about a genocide and there was nothing I could do about it, I’d get ISD. If you told me that thousands of elephants were being slaughtered in front of their families and developed post-traumatic stress disorder, and there was nothing I could do about it, I’d get ISD.
What else could I do?
And then I had an idea. I have access to a production company! I have (albeit limited) producing skills! Maybe there was something else I could do.
I conceived What You Can Do as a web series that would take a pressing social issue (global warming, AIDS in Africa, hunger, etc.) and show what an individual could DO about them if they had a minute, an hour a week or a year. We planned to begin pre-production on our inaugural episode that June. We pitched it to the Discovery Channel.
We were summarily rejected.
And then as happens every once in a very blue moon. Fate steps in.
Alicia (the one with the actual producing skills) and I were up at the Berkshire International Film Festival screening a short film that On the Leesh had produced. The festival had invited Alicia to participate in a panel to speak about emerging distribution models and she accepted.
The panel was at 9 AM on a Sunday morning. I assumed that most people would be doing my favorite Sunday activity- sleeping – but actually, it was a wonderful turnout. In the course of the discussion, our plans for What You Can Do came up, and as luck would have it, a producer from a NYC PBS affiliate was in attendance. After the panel ended, he invited us to come in and formally pitch the idea to WLIW.
We did, and they loved it.
Following the meeting was a creation process involving much trial, error, tears and leaps of faith. The result is the one-minute version that is running now. And running still.
This project thus far has been both terrifying and inspiring. Inspiring that something I had envisioned as more of a wish than an actual possibility is now -due to the efforts and faith of some immensely talented and courageous people -a reality. And terrifying in the sense that – as there are really only a few people working on this in a very small office – I am still not actually sure that this is possible.
I am not naive enough to believe that a single project can cool down the planet or end global strife, and yet, I don’t believe it’s at all too wide-eyed to surmise that the first step is to offer people tangible solutions. And who knows? Maybe these videos will reach someone or inspire someone who really can make a difference. Someone with a larger skill set, and a more talented brain than I possess.
I thank you for reading this. And I thank you for being brave/ naïve/ crazy/ hopeful/inspired/wide-eyed enough to take this leap with me.
I thank you for joining us as we kick off What You Can Do 365.
Let’s take this year – and let’s show them what we can do.
Think there’s nothing you can do to Go Green this Winter in 1 Minute?
Starring: Damion Fitz
Written by: Julie Tortorici & Jessica Arinella
Shot, Edited and Directed by: Alicia Arinella
Produced by: On the Leesh Productions
Music by: Banana Whale
What You Can Do Logo Created by: SCG Siddharth Creative Group
Statistical Information from: The EPA - www.epa.gov
Additional Footage Provided by: Shutterstock, Inc. Used by Permission
Special Thanks: Dennis Arinella
For more information, please visit – www.whatyoucando365.com
Think there’s nothing you can do to travel Green this winter?
Starring: Jennifer Dziura
Written by: Julie Tortorici & Jessica Arinella
Shot, Edited and Directed by: Alicia Arinella
Produced by: On the Leesh Productions
Music by: Banana Whale
What You Can Do Logo Created by: SCG Siddharth Creative Group
Statistical Information Provided by: The International Ecotourism Society – www.ecotourism.org
Additional Footage Provided by: Shutterstock, Inc. Used by Permission
Special Thanks: Ferdinand Weps and everyone at the International Ecotourism Society, and Dennis Arinella
For more information, please visit – www.whatyoucando365.com
Think there’s nothing you can do to Go Green this winter in 1 Minute?
Starring: Noah Diamond
Written by: Julie Tortorici & Jessica Arinella
Shot, Edited and Directed by: Alicia Arinella
Produced by: On the Leesh Productions
Music by: Banana Whale
What You Can Do Logo Created by: SCG Siddharth Creative Group
Statistical Information from: The EPA - www.epa.gov
Additional Footage Provided by: Shutterstock, Inc. Used by Permission
Special Thanks: Dennis Arinella
For more information, please visit – www.whatyoucando365.com
Think there’s nothing you can do to Go Green this winter in 1 Minute?
Starring: Dave Wall
Written by: Julie Tortorici & Jessica Arinella
Shot, Edited and Directed by: Alicia Arinella
Produced by: On the Leesh Productions
Music by: Banana Whale
What You Can Do Logo Created by: SCG Siddharth Creative Group
Statistical Information from: The EPA - www.epa.gov
Additional Footage Provided by: Shutterstock, Inc. Used by Permission
Special Thanks: Dennis Arinella
For more information, please visit – www.whatyoucando365.com
Think there’s nothing you can do to Go Green this winter in 1 Minute?
Starring: Julie Tortorici
Written by: Julie Tortorici & Jessica Arinella
Shot, Edited and Directed by: Alicia Arinella
Produced by: On the Leesh Productions
Music by: Banana Whale
What You Can Do Logo Created by: SCG Siddharth Creative Group
Statistical Information from: The EPA - www.epa.gov
Additional Footage Provided by: Shutterstock, Inc. Used by Permission
Special Thanks: Dennis Arinella
For more information, please visit – www.whatyoucando365.com
Think there’s nothing you can do to help fight Poverty in 1 Minute?
Starring: Melissa Jernigan & Greg Gallagher
Written by: Julie Tortorici & Jessica Arinella
Shot, Edited and Directed by: Alicia Arinella
Produced by: On the Leesh Productions
Music by: Banana Whale
What You Can Do Logo Created by: SCG Siddharth Creative Group
Statistical Information provied by: Soles for Souls, www.soles4souls.org
Additional Footage Provided by: Shutterstock, Inc. Used by Permission
Special Thanks: Elizabeth Kirk and everyone at Soles for Souls, and Dennis Arinella
For more information, please visit – www.whatyoucando365.com
We were recently sent some information from ShopRigte Partners in Caring regarding their efforts to combat hunger. I thought I’d pass along the information for anyone who would like to get involved!
ShopRite Partners in Caring has teamed up with General Mills to launch a new video contest called Expressions of Hunger. This local video contest encourages every day people—from classrooms to choirs, families to friends—to creatively share their perspective on the issue of hunger through song, dance, poetry or dramatic reading.
Residents of New York (only residents of six states are eligible to enter) will have the chance to be one of six (individuals or groups) to be featured on a limited-edition Cheerios box and have their video featured on the ShopRite Partners In Caring website (http://www.shopritepartnersincaring.org). Entries will be accepted from now through March 1, 2010.
With nearly 50 million Americans, including 17 million children, suffering from food insecurity last year, a 36 percent increase from the year before, leading nutrition and food policy expert Marion Nestle www.sfgate.com has identified “hunger” as one of the leading food issues of 2010. However, it’s not always easy to put a “face” on the devastating effects of hunger. Through creative expression, ShopRite Partners in Caring hopes this contest can not only raise awareness but propel people to get involved.
For those who may need an artistic nudge to get their creative juices flowing, example entries are posted on the Expressions of Hunger web site: www.expressionsofhunger.com . Also included below is the official contest press release and rules fact sheet that provides additional details.
On the Leesh Productions is a New York based company devoted to the production of innovative, energetic, and challenging film and theater. We are comprised of a core team of collaborators interested in new and provocative subject matter, in unhindered visual experimentation, and in realizing the work of like-minded creative artists and writers.
